Big Lead Sports Bar

11/22/2006

Michael Irvin's Tony Romo Comments, Revisited

A few days ago, I briefly mentioned some comments I heard on the Dan Patrick Show by Michael Irvin. The Playmaker was on to talk football, and he made some comments about Tony Romo's bloodlines that raised some eyebrows.

Unfortunately, I was merely listening to the broadcast and did not have the exact quotes. I quickly threw something together, but it failed to capture the essence and tone of precisely what Irvin said. The few readers who responded thought I was overreacting. Based on the bits and pieces I posted, that's what it could appear to some people. So I removed it, because I didn't feel it was up to my quality standards, and thought I would re-post once I had a better transcript.

Well, it turns out I wasn't the only one listening. The audio is available on ESPN Insider (for now), and the masses are starting to react:

“… [there must be] some brothers in that line somewhere … (laughs to himself) somewhere there are some brothers … I don’t know who saw what, where …. [maybe] his great, great, great, great Grandma ran over in the hood or something went down … (laughter)”

Dan Patrick, sensing disaster, jumps in and says, ‘that’s the only way to be a great athlete?’

Irvin comes back with, “No, that’s not the only way … but it’s certainly one way … [maybe his] great, great, great, great Grandma pulled one of them studs up outta the barn [and said] ‘come here for a second’ … back in the day …(more sinister laughter)”

Patrick steps in to diffuse the situation by saying, ‘Alex Haley in ‘Roots’ on the Dan Patrick Show …’

I'm not trying to go Michael Richards on Irvin but if he was say oh I don't know Asian, he may no longer be employed for making such a comment. I mean Jimmy the Greek lost his job years ago for saying something similar.

Paul Rodriguez, commenting on the Richards fiasco, captured the double standard pretty well: "Once the word comes out of your mouth and you don't happen to be African-American, then you have a whole lot of explaining."

Not excusing Richards at all, you understand; that lynching reference was brutal.

Irvin has been an idiot for a decade if not longer. Even before this, his mere presence on TV should have offended right-thinking people. Rush Limbaugh got run off for tamer remarks than that. Let's see what happens here.

I can't believe ESPN hasn't done something with this. I believe they tried to bury it last week. But in todays world thats not an easy thing to do. It will be interesting to see just how they deal with derogatory remarks from a so called"professional".